


Dimmed Bones

by the_irish_mayhem



Series: A Spark Within [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, Mental Instability, POV Azula (Avatar), Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:01:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25295116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_irish_mayhem/pseuds/the_irish_mayhem
Summary: Azula’s time will come. It will. It must.Or: An unraveled Fire Princess contemplates what’s next.
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: A Spark Within [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1759237
Comments: 2
Kudos: 78





	Dimmed Bones

**102 AG**

**Year of the Dog**

**The Fire Nation**

Azula’s prison is special.

It’s a converted tea house with rooms and rugs and an empty kitchen without cutlery or her own food. Gone, though, are the rice paper windows and the sliding doors. The walls are solid now, wood paneling and plaster. No windows she could escape through. The door is reinforced steel, probably Earth Kingdom. There’s a round the clock guard detail--probably benders, but she could take them. She _could_.

She just doesn’t. Not yet.

She’s biding her time, of course. Waiting for the right opportunity. Then she will find her father, he will become Phoenix King as he’d planned, and she will ascend to the throne that is her birthright. That Zuko had stolen from her.

(In the last Agni Kai, she couldn’t touch him. She couldn’t land a single hit. Even with the obscene power of the comet racing through her veins like a forest fire, he deflected her moves easily. _Easily_. It’d never been like that before.)

When the historians write of this time in her life, she will be sure they write this time as a moment when the Fire Nation’s destiny was tested to the breaking point, and ultimately, proven correct. She will rise from the ashes. Zuko will go down in history as the Usurper Fire Lord. The Traitor Prince. The Moonborn Son of Ozai who nearly led the nation to ruin.

(She could always beat him. He was the weak one. The unlucky son born sickly under the slivered moon in the wintertime. The embarrassment to the Royal Family who did not bend flame until he was eight years old.)

Azula’s time will come. It will. It must.

She sits cross legged in the main room, focusing on her breath. Feeling her blood flow through every part of her body. Her seat bones press hard into the floor. Her hip joints are loose, her knees resting against the floor. The strength and flexibility that came from years of bending training lingers in her--her root is strong. She can feel the sun in the sky, even if she can’t see it. It is high noon, the peak of her power.

She searches for her inner flame.

It’s--

Surely, it’s blazing. It must be.

( _Then why can’t I feel it._ )

Another deep breath.

She’s just off again today. It hasn’t been the same since the waterbender ruined the Agni Kai. Perhaps the water witch did something to her, to her chi, she--

Azula does not make any sounds of frustration. That is something Zuko used to do when he couldn’t bend properly.

She breathes again.

She looks down at her palm, where she can conjure a blue flame that has not been seen in the Royal Family since Fire Lord Yuzo seven generations ago. The blue flame that made her the pride of the nation, the pride of Fire Lord Ozai, and the favored heir.

( _How many days has it been?_ )

She can hear her father in her ear, telling her to focus. Her form must be impeccable. She must not fail. She’s not Zuko, after all.

( _How many days?_ )

She clenches her hand.

She is the favored heir. The favored heir. Ozai’s favored child. Ozai’s pride. Ozai’s prodigy.

 _Biding my time_ , she thinks again. Patience.

When the time comes, her inner flame will roar with an intensity that will dwarf even the comet’s power.

It will.

( _How many days has it been?_ )

( _How many more days will it be?_ )

* * *

“Are you going to marry the waterbender?”

In the mirror, she watches Zuko intently. She expects him to stutter and blush as was his tendency when they were younger. Disappointingly, he does neither. He doesn’t even look up from her hair.

“Katara is a good friend,” he answers calmly, and punctuates his words with another snip of the shears. The ragged edges of her black hair float to the ground.

Azula’s nose wrinkles. “That waterbending peasant will sully our bloodline, Zuzu.”

Still nothing, not even a hint of red on his ears. Perhaps these two years of playacting as Fire Lord have toughened him up past the point of her being able to needle him like she used to. Unfortunate. Zuko is funny when he’s frazzled.

“No more than the Air Nomad genocide did, I’m sure,” he replies. Another snip, another clump of hair falls to the ground. “Besides, she’s just a friend.”

Zuko is the only one brave enough to cut her hair. Her best guess is that he only has cowards on his staff who care for her and none of them are willing to be in the same room as her and a pair of shears and a breakable mirror.

“A friend with great political significance,” she replies, and examines her nail beds idly. Ragged. “I imagine marrying her might help relations with her tribe. Although, given that the South is a savage backwater, a bride from the Earth Kingdom or the Northern Water Tribe would help more.” Perhaps if she chews her nails clean off Zuko will finally listen to her requests for a manicurist. The blood would certainly draw attention. “Not that you need my advice.”

“You’re right,” he says, “I don’t.” A bit curt--so she is still able to get under his skin a little.

He combs through her hair again, the whalebone scraping at her scalp as he looks at the ends of her hair.

“It’s a little uneven on this side, Zuzu.”

“I can see that.” A few more passes with the comb. A few more snips.

“Are you liking your new accommodations?” he asks, and Azula almost laughs. There’s her awkward brother again. She’d thought she lost him.

She smiles. “A gilded cage is still a cage.”

“You’re a war criminal, Azula,” he says, less awkward now. “I could hardly let you go free.”

“Of course,” she says, going for her most patronizing tone.

His jaw clenches so hard the tendons in his neck stand out. She keeps her grin on--oh, it’s good to know she can still play him when she wants.

“You talked about smoothing things over with the Earth Kingdom and the Northern Water Tribe through marriage, but do you know the easiest way I could’ve placated them?” he asks. “Giving them you.”

That’s not what she expected him to say, but he can’t know that. “Surely they wanted Phoenix King Ozai more.”

There’s a lengthy pause before Zuko says anything further. “You don’t have to call him that.”

“It’s his rightful title. Just as Fire Lord is mine.”

Zuko rolls his eyes. _Rolls his eyes._ At her. “It’s not his rightful title, it’s something he made up to make himself feel strong.

“He got beat by Aang when he was _twelve_. You were a better bender than him by miles--that’s why he left you behind on the day of the comet.”

“No,” she hisses, “he needed me to watch over the Fire Nation. Which I did, until you stole my throne from me.”

Zuko shrugs, unconcerned again. That rankles her. He thinks himself above her? He has no idea. She’s just waiting for an opportunity to strike. He must know that.

“Technically, I didn’t steal anything,” he says. “You forfeited the Agni Kai as soon as you went after my second. Disqualification through dishonor.”

Heat shoots through her throat. “Do not talk to me about honor!” she snaps, rising to her feet impulsively. Zuko lets her, moving the shears from her hair so as to not take off any accidentally.

The gall--

“Deny it as much as you want,” Zuko says, maddeningly calm. Agni, if Azula could spit fire right now. 

( _Where is it where is my fire it should be white hot where is it where is it where--_ )

Zuko continues, “I was there. I remember, even if you don’t.”

“Don’t patronize me, _Zuzu_.” She glares daggers at him in the mirror. Perhaps if she turns, he won’t be there. Just like her mother.

(Everyone leaves her in the end, after all.)

( _Even my bending._ )

“I’m not,” Zuko says. Liar.

His fingers go back to her hair, running down to the ends. Real, then. She can feel it.

“I’m just trying to help you,” he says.

“I don’t need your help.” He’s a failure. A traitor. The Avatar’s pet.

“Sit back down,” he says, ignoring her. Her nails are leaving imprints in her palms. They’re so short she can’t use them to break skin anymore. Zuko made sure of that. “I have a little more to do.”

Azula doesn’t want to. She doesn’t need her hair cut. She crosses her arms over her chest and remains standing.

He rolls his eyes again. 

He doesn’t look much like a Fire Lord. His hair is longer than it was during the war, still tied into a topknot, but it is bereft of the Fire Lord’s traditional headpiece. His clothes are downright lower class. He looks like _the help_. And he tries to pretend he can tell her what to do?

He sighs and raises the shears to her hair anyway. “If I’m so dishonored,” she says lightly, “then why not just shave it all off? Truly mark me as a dishonored princess.”

 _Snip_. Another bit of hair drifts down.

“You were a kid,” he says, soft. His eyes meet hers in the mirror. “You’re _still_ a kid.”

“I said to not patronize me.”

“I’m _not_ ,” Zuko repeats. “I just need you to understand that.”

“What I understand,” Azula says, “is that I don’t need lectures from traitors.”

Zuko sighs again. He finishes cutting in silence.

He runs the comb through her hair once more. It’s shoulder length, much shorter than she’d ever worn it during the war.

“I hate it,” she says flatly.

“Too bad,” he replies. “It’ll grow. At least it’s evened out again.”

She turns to face him and bows deeply. “Thank you, Fire Lord Zuko.” The words feel bitter coming out of her mouth, even if they’re said in jest.

It doesn’t provoke much of a reaction from him. He stares at her in contemplation for a few silent seconds after she straightens.

“I _do_ want to help you, Azula,” he says. “I just don’t know how.”

“Bad idea for a Fire Lord to admit they don’t know something,” she replies. “It’s admitting weakness.”

He mumbles something about Uncle under his breath that she doesn’t catch before saying, “I’ll remember that, Azula. Take care.”

He takes his leave, abandoning her to her own devices once more.

* * *

“Your hair looks beautiful,” Ursa says.

“Shut up.”

“Zuko did a wonderful job.”

“Yes, your favorite child. Perfect Zuko,” she sneers. What world did her mother live in that she could’ve ever thought such a thing?

“I love you, Azula.”

She always says that.

“But you love Zuko more.”

“I don’t,” her mother says. “I understand him more, perhaps--”

“You’re dead,” Azula interrupts. “You’re not here.”

“I’m gone,” Ursa says, like a gentle correction, “but I am here.”

“You’re in my head.”

“I am here.”

“Shut up.”

“I would like to see you happy, my beautiful daughter.”

“Shut _up_.” She will never be happy as long as her traitorous brother rules the Fire Nation.

“What do you want, Azula?”

To be Fire Lord. To bring glory to the Fire Nation.

“Not what your father wanted. What do _you_ want?”

( _To have my bending back._ )

( _To not have you in my head anymore._ )

( _To see Zuko fail._ )

( _To be perfect._ )

( _To be unstoppable._ )

Ursa smiles. “Oh, darling,” she says, “You still have so much to learn.”


End file.
